Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkasy was convicted in one of the criminal cases

Metropolitan of Cherkasy and Kanevskyi Feodosiy was found guilty of inciting inter-religious hatred. The guilty verdict under Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine was handed down by the Pridneprovsky District Court of Cherkassy on February 6, 2026. This is the first of four trials against the bishop that ended in a guilty verdict, and the defense intends to appeal the decision in all court instances.

Metropolitan Theodosius personally announced the guilty verdict during his sermon in the Krasnogorsk Nunnery of the UOC, without going into details of the court’s decision. The mentioned criminal prosecution against the hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) was initiated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on the basis of his sermon delivered in February 2024.

Speaking to the faithful on February 7, Metropolitan Theodosius called the case «a contract case sewn with white threads.» Nevertheless, he expressed gratitude to God for the verdict, saying, «A guilty verdict in our conditions is in a sense a certification that you are an honest person.» The bishop stressed that his defense will actively appeal this decision in all available judicial instances, including the appellate and Supreme Courts of Ukraine, as well as, if necessary, in the European Court of Human Rights.

We shall remind you that earlier we reported that the Sosnovsky District Court of Cherkassy rejected the accusations of representatives of the regional prosecutor’s office in «Ukrainophobia» and «negative attitude to the population of Ukraine», which the prosecution put forward as arguments to aggravate the preventive measure against the hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkassy and Kanev. The judge concluded that the prosecutor had failed to substantiate his accusations factually.